1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device and a method for information processing, and a program, and particularly to a device and a method for information processing, and a program that can present information allowing efficient selection of contents to a user.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to enable a user to select various contents (still images, moving images, music, Web documents and the like) efficiently, a method of retrieving a group of contents similar to a specific content specified by the user by matching by a TF/IDF method based on a space method or using a thesaurus has been put to practical use (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Hei 3-172966. Herein after, referred as Patent Document 1). For example, a service that presents document information similar to an input text is available on the Internet (Webcat Plus (http://webcatplus.nii.ac.jp/)).
In addition, there is a method of labeling (extraction of a characteristic keyword) that groups and describes a plurality of contents (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-248686. Herein after referred as Patent Document 2).
Further, a service that clusters (classifies) results of search in response to a query (a representation of a processing request (inquiry) to a database management system as a character string) and then presents the results is also available on the Internet (Clusty (http://clusty.jp/)).